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that discourse might all escape or be lost were it not that it all moves, as it were, on a pivot, or centre question (ver. 27): “ Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto his stature ?" Birds, lilies, and bairs all contribute to His end—all act as windows, as quaint Thomas Faller would say, to let in light upon His theme and His argument; but that question clinches, it drives the nail home and fastens it. Had He merely asserted that by this anxiety they could not add & cubit to their stature, many would not have noticed the information; its triteness would have killed it ere it reached them; others might bave pertly responded, Certainly not; we know that quite well." But the same truth, simple as it seems, put in the form of a pointed question, takes hold ; it is like a burred seed—it sticks, and is not easily shaken off. As long as human nature is what it is, given to concentrate its care upon the body and the present life, leaving the world to come in abeyance, that question must ever be springing up to arrest human thought. " Add to your stature!(life). What more fascinating idea could be offered to the mind ? By anxious care! Why, which of them was not being worried with it every day, yet found no adding to the stature ? Can add to! Was not the whole life's longing and struggle one incessant hard fight to convert uncertainty into certainty-to make sure, if possible, to-day of the unknown, unseen life of to-morrow? What fruitless efforts of years of anxiety would marshal up and pass in review at the bidding of that question !

The pungency of the question suffers by defective translation. There are shadows in its light. " Which of you by taking thought." But an active, healthy mind must think will think. No one knew that better than the Saviour, and He knew, too, better than His hearers knew, how anxiety or, to use an expressive term, carking care divides the heart, corrodes the energies of the soul, and, robbing the spirit of all elevating hope, settles it down, like a water-logged sbip, to destruction. “Which of you by taking such anxious care-over and above ordinary attention to bodily and earthly things can add one cubit to his stature?" But who wants to add eighteen inches to his height? “ To add a cubit is so monstrous in the proportions of human nature, that it is a very rare thing for a fool to lift his wish so high."-Stier. The same word, ojeriav, which is here translated "stature," is in John ix. 21, 23 translated " age." Clearly life or age, not stature, is its meaning in Christ's question. This being seen, how the question comes home, with all its searching force, to human experience! To live, and add to the length of one's days, is just the one ever-dominating thought of the heart. “Men feel a thousand deaths in fearing one." Nothing blinds the human spirit and shuts off from it the future and the unseen so completely as this carking care-this worse than useless care to add a span or a cubit to this present life. Those who wish to pursue this further may do so very profitably by considering the words of the Psalmist, “Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee; verily, every man

at his best estate is altogether vanity.” Royalty is said to have offered an extravagant price for "an inch of time;" not extravagant as compared with the inch of time, but as compared with the ability of a dying monarch. Voltaire is said to have offered Dr. Trouchin half his wealth if he would prolong his life for six months, and he was stricken with anguish when told that he could not live six weeks. “Skin for skin, all that a man hath will be give for his life;" but by no agony of anxiety can be add one moment to it when God has said, “ Cat him down." Seeing, then, that you cannot add to your life, " why not cheerfully trust that tender Providence which takes no advantage of our weakness, but ministers as the gentlest nurse to all our needs ?” Christ's question does not forbid ordinary thought about our daily wants; but it does forbid a wretched, blank atheism respecting Divine care over us; it bids as take God with us into the workshop, the garden and the field, the market-place and the counting-house, and leave our lives and their needs to His care; it bids us to honour Him as sons, and not to scandalise Him as heathens. Christ's question speaks to men, not in a crowd, but in units, to each one by himself alone. The written Word is still the living Voice, and all along all the ages its, Which of you ? singles out each individual, and by pressing the question on him, and waiting for his answer, is seeking to turn his heart upwards to God and heaven. It stretches out the eternal hand-strong, faithful, and infinitely tender—and seems to say,

• Come to Him, continually come, casting all the present at His feet,

Boldly, but in prayerful love, and fling off selfish cares;
Commit the future to His will—the viewless, fated future;
Zealously go forward with integrity, and God will bless thy path.
For that, feeble as thou art, there is with thee a mighty Conqueror,

Thy Friend, the same for ever, yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow." But it must not be supposed that this question of Jesus levels all its precision and expends all its force against those carking cares for the body which, alas ! infest the path of poverty and the life of the labourer, whose daily toil scarcely meets his daily wants. The Jews were money-lovers then, and so are the Gentiles now. Money in itself is not an evil thing, it is the “ love of money which is the root of all evil.” “ They that will be rich"-and most people will if they can—" will fall into temptation and a share, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.” Silver mines have fascinating mouths, and gold-diggings, even if rough and arduous, are still to many the royal road to the Elysium of life. Demas said the way to the silver mine was not very dangerous, except to the careless ; “but he blashed as he spoke.” Achan thought the wedge of gold and the Babylonian garment very grand and good ; but from their hiding-place in bis tent they acted as an electric battery, paralysing the arms of all Israel. If the pursuit of gold was the ruling passion of the Jew then, it is not less the master passion of the Gentiles to-day, Think of the race for wealth in the present genera.

tion. What is it that has so entirely changed the methods of business, and given rise to such “ diamond-cut-diamond " modes of buying and selling of advertising and puffing, of adulteration and deception, of rotten ships at sea, recklessly exposing human lives at the altar of greed, and of fictitious representations ashore, culminating in ruin to numberless victims —wbat, but the love of riches, the greed for money and its many streams of pleasure and enjoyment, in a word, the inordinate race for wealth ? Jesus Christ, inaugurating the New Kingdom, does not despise gold and silver. No; like everything else that He made, they are very good, and in His kingdom He has places and uses for them; but He does at once and for ever condemn the earthly, camal love of money. God makes use of money in His government; through His exchequer millions sterling pass every day; but the moment money becomes a rival to Himself in the affections of men He casts it out. As His own property and servant, He paves His streets with it (Rev. xxi. 21); as His enemy He flings it into bell. Jesus Cbrist protests solemnly the utter impossibility of man serving God and mammon-God and gold. He blows the clarion-blast of heaven itself to warn men that money is not the ladder by which they can climb its heights ; it is rather the broken reed which will let them down-the pointed spear which will pierce them through with many sorrows-the gilded hole which will deceitfully let them through, down to the blackness of darkness. God may.commit riches to our stewardship; but if so, we must lay up treasure in heaven with them. He reminds us that intense apxiety for wealth is not a dividing of the beart between God and gold, but a complete severance of the heart from God, an entire devotion of it to gold. He tells us that the heart itself is moulded into bard, sordid selfishness, or into God-like beauty and tenderness, just as it loves gold or God. And, in view of all these solemn possibilities, is it worth while to run the risk ? Will the gain pay for the candle ? And if it will, which of you by all your anxiety after wealth can add a cubit to the span of your life? He puts the infinitely sublime and the infinitely ridiculous into eternal opposition by His question. A master of fiction throws an oxygen light upon Christ's question when he makes the widower say, “ Money, my boy, can do all things.” And the lad replies, “ Then why didn't it keep my mother alive?”

"He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house,” says the wise man (Prov. xv. 27). And what for ? The sum of Christ's question answers, for nothing that is good, for he cannot add anything to his life by it. Nay, he cannot add an atom of good to what God would give him without his anxious greed. A man may do better with heart's ease and less of this vorld, than with great abundance as the fruit of soul-dwarfing, soul-destroying anxiety. “Godliness with contentment is great gain."

Long Buckby.

THE LITTLE RED CUSHION.

" CORNELIA EVARTS!”

can't hardly hear myself think. Little Miss Prim snapped out the Now I'll see if I can stop it. Wait words with as much of an air as if a bit; you must get the corn-cob she had a hundred or two scholars, in." instead of a small district school;l "Oh, I don't want that," cried so small that you could almost put Cornelia, under her fool's-cap, the whole thing under a good-sized which Miss Prim had jammed, like umbrella and walk away with it. an extinguisher, over her counte

“ Yes’m," came back in a meek nance; and watching timidly the little voice from the other end of teacher's movements. “Oh no, the room.

I don't!" " I'm not going to hear this noise “But it's just what you're going any longer. No, I am not!" de- to have," said Miss Prim, with a clared Miss Prim. “ So do you just nod," so open your mouth.” And walk up here to the desk this very she held up a big corn-cob, ready minute!"

to pop in, the moment she saw the Two small feet stumbled out into two rows of little white teeth. the passage between the well-worn So Cornelia had the mouthful wooden benches; and the little girl slipped in, and then, in obedience walked slowly up to the big desk, to Miss Prim's command, she till she stood exactly in front of the mounted a little cricket in front of sharp little eyes of the teacher, who the teacher's desk, and turned a looked her over keenly from head comical face of distress to the other to foot.

scholars, who, one and all, set up & “What have you been doing to laugh at her appearance. make all the children laugh ? " at She couldn't cry, because the last she said.

corn-cob wouldn't let her ; nor yet "Nothing,” said Cornelia, drag- could she beg the teacher to take it ging her well-worn shoe back and out, and give her any other punishforth over the old school-room floor. ment under the sun, than to make And then with a small stop, that her the laughing-stock of the whole just saved her from a falsehood, school. added, “Only "

| All she could do was to stand "Only what?said Miss Prim there in utter misery, rolling her sharply, and adjusting her spec- eyes at the clock to watch its slow tacles for better sight. “ Speak out hands point out her release. now!"

“Now," exclaimed Miss Prim, “ Nothing," again said Cornelia, having fixed her as a public warnbut with a gasp she came up again. ing for all other naughty children, “ I didn't mean ter-I— " " I shall see what you have been

“I can't help what you meant to hiding in your desk that has made do," replied Miss Prim severely, such a disturbance among the and she opened a drawer under the scholars. I shall see for myself!" old desk. "Now then "

So she walked down between the She brought out what looked like two rows of benches, having all a wad of paper, but when unrolled, eyes upon her, till she came to it proved to be a huge cap, which Comelia's little old desk. Without she proceeded, with great delibera-la second's pause, she flung back the tion, to fit on Cornelia's head. lid and exposed to view-what?

I've had trouble enough,” she A little heart-shaped pincushion said, “all this morning, so that I lofred silk, sewed with painstaking

care, and stuck with pins that around her, and giving her a dozen formed crooked little letters, but or more kisses that nearly knocked each one set by loving fingers. And the breath out of her. “Don't you the letters were, “Miss PRIM !” forget that; I've had the biggest

The little, thin, stern teacher surprise I've ever had in my life, staggered back, and rubbed her and a lesson too!”she added, with eyes.

a humble little droop to her voice. Then she picked up the little “Children," and she tore off the cushion, and started with rapid fool's-cap from the little brown head footsteps for her desk.

before her, then turned and faced “Cornelia "-out came the corn them all, “I ought to wear this cob at the same moment, what myself-only," and a smile quivered is this for ?" she asked, holding it over her thin lips, “I suppose it ир.

wouldn't look very well for your "You said," mumbled Cornelia, teacher to be so punished for her rubbing her mouth with her fat carelessness." little hand, " that 'twas your birth- “ But," and she held as high as day to-morrow ; I heard you tell she could reach the little red pinAunt Johnson 80-an' I wanted to cushion for them all to see, “ this s'prise you—I did.”

will always say to me, "Be sure "Well, you have !" cried Miss before you find fault !!" Prim, throwing her thin arms

“ COMETH FORTH LIKE A FLOWER.”

BY THE REV. T. FRENCH.

Job xiv. 2.

We all love flowers. We love them for their beauty, their fragrance, for the refreshing rest they bring to the eye of care. We love them even because they are so fragile, and for the tender watchfulness they demand from us. We love them because God gave them to us that we may here have that which is “ pleasant to the sight,” as well as that which is “ good for food.”

God loves the flowers too, loves them for what they are as they have come forth from His creative power; for has He not made many to bloom on mountain heights, and in deep recesses of the forest, where none but He Himself and the angels can see them ?

How like the flowers are the young, the sons and daughters which are the beauty, the fragrance, and the joy of our homes! In acknowledgment of this similarity they often bear the names of flowers; Rose, Rosa, and Rhoda, for example, Lilian, Susannah, May, and many others. Some Hebrew scholars seem to think that in the original Rath signifies the name of a flower, and that she was perhaps known as the “ Rose of Moab.” She was a flower indeed.

We love these flowers. We love them for what they are to us ; for the brightness they shed around our paths, and the softening influences they exert over our minds. We love them even for the anxious

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